Critique Response

     During the critique I felt as if I was leading the discussion about my website rather than getting actual critical feedback from others, but the class critique was still able to give me help as to what I felt still needed to be worked on. I brought up wanting to put auto margins around the whole page, so I have now done that since the critique. This brought along another issue though that I am not sure on how to fix and I have gone through many many ways to try and resolve it. My "title box" is perfectly aligned with my "main body area" but on the index it is shifted 15px extra from the left compared to all my other pages in which it doesn't move and they never did before the auto margin change. I did go ahead and try to narrow it down my commenting out div by div, but even then it didn't change.

     The critique made me want to go back and try to create style without having background colored boxes around div of information. I went in and changed my color scheme, text sizes, and some of the features such as bolds. Another thing that was mentioned was my placement of my contact information. I agreed that it needed to be moved somewhere and I decided that the top of my about page was the best location. Since it is small and can be a quick focus while also making noticeable that the page is a scroll page because someone mentioned that it might get lost at the bottom if people were to not realize it scrolls. 

     The image on my page I wanted to stay in place while the informational text I have written would be able to scroll. I was having a very hard time doing this so I decided to just make it absolute, but this was before the critique. After the critique and fixing the auto margins it made me really want to figure out how to fix the picture within the div. I tried to do it by using sticky, but I could not get sticky to work or even show up as an actual position type, so I ended up finding a different way and it was through using a "transformation." This actually did exactly what I wanted it to do, but it ended up making it not perfectly align with the right side of the menu how it was before. 

     So as of now I am happy with what I have so far of my website. The only things as of right now that I want guidance on fixing is the about photo alignment with my menu, and the whole page alignment issue of my index compared to the other two pages.

my website

homepages.utoledo.edu/jrabban

"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

In Walter Benjamin's essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," he made a lot of points about the way technology has affected art. One point he wrote about is how technology has had the ability to cause mechanical reproductions of works of art and this causes many things to happen such as the works of art start to lose their authenticity and uniqueness. Also he mentions new forms of art during that time which included photography and film. One other interesting point he mention was that original works of art have their own individual auras that come along with a specific time, place, and historical context.
I agree with Walter Benjamin that all art has its own aura. Along with this I also do agree that the reproduction of art takes away from this. After looking at a painting, reading a poem or book, listening to a song, or experiencing any form of art the viewer is able to understand where the art came from and the emotions/details transferred within the work; but when a work of any type is reproduced it tends to lose its sense of having its own experience which entails that the reproductions of works do not contain as special an aura as the original is able to.
When this was written in 1936, photography and film were the up and coming technologies in the art world. Walter Benjamin did not seem to like the way that these technologies were also causing for manipulations and reproductions of once original works of art. Although this seems to be a bit unrealistic because people throughout all time have been reproducing works of art of the people before them. The current art history I am in has shown this many times by showing us the many artists who recreated religious works such as: "Christ's Entry into Jerusalem" and "Madonna and Child Enthroned." So for Walter Benjamin to disapprove of the reproduction of work so strongly is something that I have to disagree with. I believe that it is okay to recreate works of art in your own style and that it would just create another new original piece with its own aura without diminishing the authenticity of the first original work. I do although agree that if someone were to deliberately lets say just take a photo of someones else's work and print it off and sell it as their own that it would definitely be taking away from that work of art's originality and causes it to be less authentic and unique which would be unfair to the original artist who actually created the wonderful work.
Overall Walter Benjamin did have a lot of good points on how technology can affect art based on the act of mechanical reproduction. Technology constantly is becoming more advanced and as this happens it becomes easier and easier to reproduce works of art.

website sketches